Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet GARDEN GROVE, Calif.– There are a lot of foods that remind us of home. For those of us who call Vietnam “home,”we can still smell the food from sidewalk stalls, especially fresh seafood such as grilled snails, clams and oysters bubbling with scallion oil and crushed peanuts on a hot summer evening. Grilled oysters finished with Vietnamese coriander and fried shallots, scallions and peanuts. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
But for those of us who have never set foot on one of Vietnam’s bustling city streets 9,000 miles away, Oc & Lau Restaurant delivers a pretty close experience.
Minus the sidewalk.
Opened just 18 months ago by Lynn Nguyen and her family, the restaurant is now thriving. Lines each day average 45 minutes to an hour. On busy weekends, a two-hour line is not uncommon.
Escargot with a fresh peppercorn and herbed butter sauce, fresh off the grill. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
“I hate that people have to wait in line, but I’m happy that they’re willing to wait,” Nguyen said.
What’s the secret to the restaurant’s success? According to Nguyen, it’s the simplicity and adaptations of her recipes that did the trick.
“I cook the way that I like to eat at home, and I find that most people like that similar taste,” Nguyen said. “From when we opened until now, I’ve adjusted the recipes according to people’s feedback, and the results now are pretty consistent.”
Lobster sautéed with scallions and red pepper is prepared for Oc & Lau’s lobster noodles dish. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
Nguyen and her family are amateur restaurateurs who owned a Vietnamese CD store before closing shop and venturing on to Oc & Lau Restaurant, located at 10130 Garden Grove Blvd.
The idea came about when Ivan, Nguyen’s 37-year-old son, traveled to Vietnam and saw the popularity of quan oc — snail stalls — on the busy streets of Saigon. He frequented those stands and thought to bring that to the states.
“My brother decided we needed to do something else as a family because the CD store was losing money,” said Katie Nguyen, his 21-year-old sister. “We decided to take a chance, and it’s been really rewarding.”
The entire family, consisting of Lynn and husband Henry, Katie, Ivan and 33-year-old Tina, has a role in the restaurant. On any given day, you can find Lynn inside the kitchen, mixing the nuoc mam dipping sauce herself and cleaning herbs and chopping vegetables. Katie serves as the hostess, and Tina is the manager. Ivan is in charge of logistics and the business end of the restaurant, and Henry comes in to help when needed.
Snails in coconut cream sauce. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
“I think the reason people love coming to our restaurant is because it reminds them of Vietnam,” Katie said. “And every time people want to eat oc, or snails, they’d have to go to a quan nhau, and it’s not family friendly. But here, you can bring your kids and enjoy the food without the smoke.”
As the name suggests, the popular items at the restaurant are oc which means snails, and lau, which means hotpot. Favorites include snails cooked in a coconut cream sauce that requires toothpicks to extract the tiny meat and is reminiscent of a mild, Thai curry broth.
Razor clams, oysters and scallops grilled with butter scallion sauce and topped with fried shallots are staples of the restaurant. Mango salad with grilled squid and crackers has a fresh citrus flavor and a hint of spice from the fresh chilies. The flavors are bold, piquant and a good contrast to the smokiness of the grilled shellfish.
“The secret to our success is in the cleanliness and time that we take to prepare the seafood,” said matriarch Lynn Nguyen. “To me, that is so important. It takes much more time to be careful but personally, if I eat shellfish and there’s just one grain of sand, it ruins the experience for me, so I try to translate that in the way I cook and do business here too. It makes me happy when people walk out happy and enjoy the food.”
Grilled jumbo squid with dipping sauce. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
Nguyen estimates that in a day, the restaurant sells more than 300 bowls of bun mam, a very pungent soup with a fermented fish base that can be overwhelming for some and downright intoxicating to others. The Nguyen family version includes shrimp, barbecued crispy pork, shrimp stuffed eggplant and chunks of white fish. It is served with a side of vegetables that features pea sprouts, julienne banana blossoms and fresh herbs.
Oc & Lau also sells roughly 100 servings of hotpot each day that range from Thai sweet and sour style to oxtail or fermented fish. The lau is served on a portable, butane-powered stove and brought to the table with dishes filled with vegetables ranging from okra, to watercress and tomatoes, to pineapple, depending on the soup base. Shrimp, crab, squid and fish steaks are popular protein options to go with the lau but vary as well.
Julie Tran, 26, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport from Toronto just before she headed to Oc & Lau, said it was a “must eat” on her list of places to go to.
“I’ve never found a place in this area that comes close to what this place serves,” Tran said. “Coming from Canada, we don’t have many Vietnamese seafood choices, so this is definitely worth the wait. I just love the clams and snails.”
Ingredients served at the table for Oc & Lau’s “lau mam”. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)
Paul Tran, one of several line cooks at the restaurant, is convinced the popularity of the restaurant is due to the fact that people are tired of eating chicken and beef.
“These days, seafood is the way to go,” Tran said. “These snails and clams take some finesse and fine tuning to grill correctly, but the time it takes makes all the difference.”
Expanding and opening additional locations could occur in the near future.
“It’s better than we ever thought, because we never expected it to be this crazy,” Katie Nguyen said. “Crazy in a good way. It’s so rewarding to see what my brother has started is affecting us in such a good way. Not all businesses make it, and I think this is maybe the biggest blessing our family has ever had.”
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